1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to receptacles with means to gather and store a product and more particularly to a tubular receptacle having a resiliently deformable entry structure at its lower end to allow ingress of pine cones therethrough and prevent egress of the pine cones therethrough.
2. Background and Description of Prior Art
Coniferous trees of the order Coniferales are widely distributed especially through the temperate zones of the earth and such plants are often used for ornamentation and landscaping in cultivated habitable areas. These plants in their ordinary life cycle drop cones during a substantial portion of each calendar year and in general it is desired that these cones be collected and removed from cultivated areas both by reason of the aesthetics involved and the impediments that such cones present to future cultivation if they remain in place. In general in smaller areas such cones heretofore have been collected for removal by manual means of collection such as directly with the collector's hands or sometimes as aided by tools such as a rake to bring a plurality of such cones into a collection area where the plurality may be picked up by hand or moved into a container. In larger areas fallen pine cones have sometimes been collected by use of mechanical devices such a mechanized rakes, rotary brushes or the like. Mechanized devices, however, are sufficiently costly to make them economically infeasible for the owners of smaller parcels of property and often such mechanisms are not operative within the physical bounds, about obstacles and over topographic features often present in such parcels.
The instant invention provides a hand manipulable tool, of simple and economic construction for use in picking up and storing a plurality of fallen pine cones, that may be operated by a user while maintaining a standing position and without direct manual contact with the pine cones.
Pine cones comprise a plurality of ovule-bearing or pollen-bearing scales or bracts in trees of the pine family (genus Pinus of the Pinaceae family) or in cycads (family Cycadacene). The size and configuration of pine cones vary widely with major dimensions ranging upwardly to twelve inches or more and minor dimensions, especially in smaller cones, often approaching the major dimensions to produce configurations ranging from a near spherical-like shape ranging through oblate spheroids to elongate curvilinear conic-like shapes. Pine cones also vary widely in both density and rigidity and all of these attributes commonly change through different periods of the cone life cycle, whether a cone is attached to a tree or has fallen therefrom. For a tool to be useful in collecting pine cones and have economic viability for use throughout the United States, the tool must be usable with a wide variety of cones of varying physical attributes there present.
The scales and bracts of pine cones are commonly quite hard and rigid when and after the cones have dropped and the configuration of many bracteal types is somewhat triangular with the triangle apex extending outwardly and terminating in a sharp thorn-like end. By reason of this structure it is desirable that a tool for pine cone collection operate in a fashion that does not require direct manual contact or manipulation of the cone by a user to prevent injury and discomfort.
It is further desirable that a pine cone collection tool provide a containment structure wherein a plurality of collected pine cones may be accumulated and stored before having to empty the tool for further use. For practical usability the containment chamber must also be easily accessible and manipulable to allow emptying of stored pine cones preferably without any manual contact by a user.
Heretofore various hand tools designed and used primarily for purposes other than the collection of pine cones have been used or indicated as usable for pine cone collection, but it is not known that any tools heretofore known have been specially designed for pine cone collection. Long handled tools of a grasping type having jaws pivotally movable toward and away from each other have been used for pine cone collection but those tools do not necessarily well grasp a pine cone, are not easily manipulable to so do and do not provide means for storing a plurality of collected pine cones for deposition at a future time. Various sweeping or raking type hand tools have been used to amass a plurality of pine cones for collection but these tools provide no storage facility for collected cones and often require the user to move from a standing position to place amassed cones in a storage or transport member. Various tube or chamber type devices having an orifice structure that passes objects only for ingress and prevent egress of contained objects have heretofore been known, but in general such devices have been designed for specific objects generally having uniform predeterminable size and configuration such as collection devices for golf balls, tennis balls, baseballs, nuts and the like. These devices have often allowed operation without a user moving from a standing posture but they are not usefully operable to pick up pine cones of substantially varying shapes and sizes as such devices generally have no means for picking up variously sized and configured objects such as pine cones. If pine cones should pass into their storage elements there generally is no means to surely prevent their egress.
The instant invention seeks to resolve these problems by providing an elongate tubular tool with a particular specialized entry structure about its lower orifice providing a releasably attachable annulus supporting plural radially inwardly extending circumferentially spaced finger elements that are formed of resiliently deformable sheet material that has a retentent memory operative quite rapidly to return the finger elements to the normal null configuration after deformation. The finger elements may have a slightly arcuate axially inward angulation to aid in maintaining a pine cone beneath the entry structure for and during collection. Both any angulation of the entry structure and the peripheral shape of split finger elements operate synergistically during the collecting process aid in moving a pine cone into a position relative to the entry structure that provides a higher probability of entry of the pine cone through the entry structure and its retention in the tool than entry and retaining structures of known devices used to collect objects of predetermined similar size and configuration.
Our invention does not reside in any one of the these features individually but rather in the synergistic combination of all of the structures of our tool that necessarily give rise to the functions flowing therefrom as hereinafter specified and claimed.